The Road Trip

• Nineteen •

We'd been on the couch for a full ten minutes—Luke's face buried in a textbook, my feet nuzzled against his thigh for warmth as I lay beside him watching She's the Man.

I'd just needed a minute of not jumping right into bed with him because I was still trying to wrap my mind around what we were doing. It was more than hooking up for sure, but were we all of a sudden a couple? And it wasn't something I wanted to have a conversation about at the present moment—because I wasn't sure how I'd react if he wanted to consider me his girlfriend. I'd never been a girlfriend a before, and I wasn't sure I liked the idea. That was a little too much responsibility for me.

I caught him trying to hide a laugh at the movie, so I dug my toes into his thigh. "I think you secretly watch rom-coms by yourself and delete them from your 'watched' list."

"Totally something I'd do," Luke agreed. "But I'll gladly watch rom-coms with you."

He stretched out his arm and rubbed my thigh for a few minutes.

"Did you buy your entire apartment out of a Pottery Barn catalogue?" I asked him when I found myself distracted by a modern lamp in the corner.

"No," Luke laughed. "My mom's an interior decorator. She redecorated it last year in one of her guilt phases after not spending Christmas with me."

"I think you'd hate my apartment."

"I won't hate your apartment."

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he squeezed my thigh, I watched him read for a few minutes, flipping a few pages.

"Does someone clean your apartment, or are you just this OCD?"

He squeezed again. "Both. Does that bother you?"

I wasn't sure which one he was referring to, but I guessed neither one did. "No, I don't think so."

"If it makes you feel better, I made my bed because I hoped you would come."

"You thought I might not show up?"

"I thought it was a possibility."

"Totally something I'd do," I laughed.

Luke smiled at me and ran his hand down to my calf, switching to rubbing it with his thumb. I smiled to myself when he turned back to his book.

I really didn't want to be anywhere else. And that scared me a little. A lot.

"Luke, is that my mom's hummingbird feeder?"

He turned his head slowly, catching my eyes briefly, before he looked out the window next to us. "It is," he smiled.

"How?"

"I told you I was going to steal one. And I'm great at shoplifting." He flicked my butt.

"I don't think you've ever stolen anything in your life."

Narrowing an eye in thought, Luke said, "I think you're right. What did you steal in your wild days?"

"I stole some lip gloss once on accident when I was nine. I put it in my pocket to bring to my mom, but I distracted myself so much along the way I forgot it was there by the time I reached her. I only realized when we got into the car, and I burst into tears."

"Did your mom make you bring it back?"

"No! She laughed and told me to enjoy my new lip gloss because she wasn't going back to deal with it."

Luke laughed. "Smart woman. I'm honored to have her feeder. Your dad gave it to me when I went by your house. After I asked very politely."

"Oh." I smiled. That had been there for months hanging from Luke's porch. Luke looked at it every day. A piece of my mom that I didn't even know he had. I had to force myself to stop smiling. "I saw one this morning at my apartment—a hummingbird."